(Excerpt) @Singleton Annotation: A Easier Way

Whether the singleton is pattern or an anti-pattern, there are still some cases where we need to create singletons. We're used to create a private constructor, a getInstance() method for a static field or even an initialized public static final field. So instead of writing code like this in Java:

public class T {
    public static final T instance = new T();
    private T() {}
}
You just need to annotate your type with the @Singleton annotation:

@Singleton class T {}
The singleton instance can then simply be accessed with T.instance (direct public field access).

You can also have the lazy loading approach with an additional annotation parameter:

@Singleton(lazy = true) class T {}
Would become more or less equivalent to this Groovy class:

class T {
    private static volatile T instance
    private T() {}
    static T getInstance () {
        if (instance) {
            instance
        } else {
            synchronized(T) {
                if (instance) {
                    instance
                } else {
                    instance = new T ()
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
Lazy or not, once again, to access the instance, simply do T.instance (property access, shorcut for T.getInstance()).